Chapter Twenty
After lunch, Maggie drives Piper to the wilderness clearing where Aidan told them to meet. The ground is covered with a mix
of rust- and gold-colored leaves freshly fallen from the towering hardwoods surrounding the clearing. Oaks, maples and birches
line the edges, their branches half bare.
“It’s so beautiful here,” Piper said. “It makes me realize we don’t fully experience autumn in the city. At least, not like
this.”
Maggie feels the warmth of contentment rush through her.
The air is crisp and carries the earthy aroma of damp leaves mixed with the faint sweetness of ripe wild berries that dot
the undergrowth. In the center of the clearing, wild grasses and late-season wildflowers like goldenrod and asters sway gently.
A white-tailed deer stands nearby, cautiously observing.
“So how do we find him?” Piper says, hands on her hips as she surveys the area.
“He dropped a pin,” Maggie says, squinting at her phone screen in the bright sun. “But now I think we’re walking in the wrong
direction.”
Piper reaches for Maggie’s phone.
“Let me help. Why didn’t we plan to meet him outside the inn and follow in our own car?”
“Because they had to meet up with the others first,” Maggie says.
“Who’s they?”
“Aidan and his son.”
Piper puts the phone down to her side and looks at her. “What son? You didn’t say anything about a son.”
“Say anything? You agreed to this so fast this morning I couldn’t get a word in if I’d tried.”
It was true. And by the time they were immersed in their first knitting workshop, it slipped her mind. Before she can explain
this, she spots Aidan. He’s with a tall, good-looking young man with sandy-brown hair. His son? The young guy smiles at Piper
as if he knows her. When they get closer, Piper says, “What are you doing here?” She’s unmistakably pleased.
“You two know each other?” Maggie glances at Aidan. Is Aidan in on this? Is it some sort of setup after all? But no, he seems
surprised too.
“We met yesterday,” Cole says.
“Twice,” says Piper, and they recount a story of Cole borrowing her phone. “Your cheek looks better, by the way,” Piper says.
He replies with some sort of inside joke, and Piper laughs. How can they have an inside joke already? Somehow, Piper had a
whole new friend she knew nothing about. A handsome young man. Ethan wouldn’t be happy. Although she has no doubt Piper’s
interest in this young man, however attractive, is strictly platonic.
“So what’s the plan here?” Maggie says.
“The plan is, we have two hours to see how far we can get building a shelter. It’s a competition—the rest of our group is
paired up. The team who gets the most done during the allotted time wins.”
“So . . . the rest of the bachelor party is teamed up and you two have . . . us?” Piper says. “I hate to break it to you, but you’re gonna lose.”
“Piper! What kind of attitude is that?” Maggie says. “We’ve got this.”
Aidan meets her eyes and it gives her a little jolt. “You think so?”
“Yes,” she says, sounding more certain than she feels. She’s never built anything in her life, unless you count the Lego sets
when Piper was little.
“We already started gathering material. When we’re done, we need to get these larger branches propped up for an A-frame, then
start weaving in the smaller branches and vines,” Aidan says.
“We’re gathering materials, not building the actual fort,” Cole says to him.
“I know. But if we construct a sample of how the elements we collected work, it shows we know what we’re doing.”
Cole nods, and Maggie wonders how seriously they’re taking their own intra-team competition. She suspects they’re not at all
concerned about the one among the four of them. They think they’ve already won.
“I’m ready. Let’s go!” Maggie says. Piper shoots her a look like, Calm down.
“Cole, you grab the other end of this log for me. Maggie, you and Piper can start stringing together those vines so that when
the frame goes up, we can fill in the openings quickly.”
Does he presume she and Piper aren’t capable of doing heavy lifting?
“Hold up—here comes Grandpa,” Cole says.
Maggie recognizes the man heading over. She saw him at the lunch table yesterday.
He looks like he’s in his late seventies, trim with a nearly full head of gray hair.
He’s wearing black sunglasses and an olive-green all-weather jacket zipped up, camouflage cargo pants, hiking boots, a tactical belt, and a wide-brimmed hat.
“Hello, boys. Just wanted to meet the guests you told me about, Aidan. Howdy, ladies.”
“Barclay, these are our friends Maggie and Piper,” Aidan says.
The man lowers his sunglasses and looks at her.
“Aren’t you the gal who scolded us yesterday at lunch for being too loud?” he says.
Maggie feels her face flush. Piper turns to her and says, “Wait—what did you do?”
“Nothing,” Maggie says. Then, to Barclay, “Yes, that was me. Sorry about that.”
“Bygones,” he says. “I’m just glad to see you’ve found a more productive outlet for your aggression.”
Aidan takes a step forward.
“Dad, we’re all good over here. Everything’s under control,” he says.
“Not so fast: Since you’re now a foursome, you’re a new team. Gonna call you Team Boyce, after the great outdoorsman William
Dickson Boyce.”
“Fantastic. In it to win it, Grandpa,” Cole says.
“Wait—what are the other teams?” Maggie says.
“Glad you asked, little lady,” says Barclay. “We have team Daniel Boone, and team Davy Crockett—the team the Barclay boys
seceded from.”
“Seceded might be an overstatement,” says Aidan.
“Yeah, Grandpa. We can probably do without the Civil War references.”
Maggie is still recovering from “Little lady.” She can’t believe people still talk like that.
“Well,” she says, “since our team is half female, we should be named after a woman.”
She feels Aidan looking at her, and Barclay clearly doesn’t know whether she’s serious or busting his chops. Either way, he’s
smiling.
“Like who?” he says.
Maggie actually has no idea. She tries to think of outdoorsy women. Jane Goodall? She’s a conservationist. Does that count?
Bindi Irwin? She’s more of a zoologist. An image comes to mind of knee-high Wellies and a pack of corgis. A hike in the Scottish
highlands . . .
“We’re Team Queen Elizabeth,” she announces.
Barclay shakes his head no. “That’s missing the point, sweetheart. The theme is outdoors. Wilderness.”
“I know. Queen Elizabeth was a huge outdoor person—hunting, fishing, you name it. I bet she could have out-bushcrafted every
one of us here. Including you, Barclay.”
He seems about to say something, then reconsiders. “Not so sure about your logic, but as an admitted Anglophile, I’m willing
to go with it. So, Team Queen Elizabeth, you have an hour and a half left.” He pulls something from his bag, something copper
and small, and hands it to Cole. It’s an old-fashioned compass.
“What did I tell you earlier?” Barclay asks him.
“Never walk into the woods without a tool for getting out.”
“Exactly! Ladies, I don’t want you picking up any bad habits from these two. You cannot—and it’s impossible to stress this
enough—you cannot rely on your phone in an emergency scenario.” He looks at Maggie and she nods as if she knows exactly what
he’s talking about.
She looks at Aidan and he mouths “Sorry.” She smiles. Barclay makes his way over to a pile of branches, hands on his hips.
“This is your insulation material?”
“That’s it,” Cole says.
“Not enough.” Barclay shakes his head. “Cole, you and your friend there—go gather more vines. These brittle little twigs won’t
do squat.”
Piper looks at her, shrugs, then walks off alongside Cole without another glance in her direction.
Okay then.
Aidan smiles at her and says, “So. I guess it’s just the two of us.”
It’s merely a statement of the obvious, but it gives her a shiver of excitement.
“I’m sure they’ll be back soon,” she says, though she’s sure of no such thing.
Adian, dressed in a weathered flannel shirt and sturdy cargo pants, exudes a sort of charisma that makes it clear he’s perfectly
at ease in the wilderness. He picks up thick branches and heavy rocks like they’re nearly weightless. He seems like someone
who is used to manual labor, to getting his hands dirty. She can’t help but imagine what he’d be like in bed.
Stop it.
“So, what do you do when you’re not hunting and gathering?” she says. She’s starting to feel overheated. She’s wearing a wool
turtleneck sweater under her bomber jacket. Lifting and balancing branches like some giant Jenga game was the most rigorous
workout she’s had in a long time. Sweating and breathing heavily, she takes a time-out to shed her jacket. She folds it and
leaves it on the ground, feeling self-conscious that Aidan is watching her.
“Are you asking me what I do for a living?” he says.
The way he asks shames her a little, but why should she feel embarrassed? It’s a perfectly normal question in her day-to-day life. Maybe in that moment, in that setting, it was too personal. Or like she’s looking for criteria by which to evaluate him.
“I own a chain of food markets here in Bucks County. Expanding soon to other areas. Cole’s in charge of the expansion.”
“Oh, that’s so nice that you work together.” God, she’d love working with Piper. It would be so much fun.
“How ’bout you?” he asks.
She tells him about the clothing store. “I started there when Piper was a baby. I never intended it to be my career. It just
turned out that way.”
“I can relate. When I started working at the local supermarket stocking shelves I was maybe twelve years old. Did it for pocket
money. Never imagined I’d go into the business for real one day. Life, right?” After a minute, he adds, “Taking off for this
long weekend was a bigger deal than it should have been. I probably need to manage my time better.”
“You don’t get out much?” she says.
“I get out about as much as I want. But according to my friends, that’s not enough.”